Photo App Twitpic Shuts Down Over Trademark Spat With Twitter

Twitpic, a website that has helped people upload photos to Twitter for the past six years, is shutting down because of a trademark spat with the social media service.

The startup says it will be no more as of Sept. 25 after it claims Twitter threatened to cut its access to the service if it didn’t alter its trademark.

The decision was “unexpected and hard,” wrote Twitpic founder Noah Everett in a farewell blog post.

“A few weeks ago Twitter contacted our legal demanding that we abandon our trademark application or risk losing access to their API. This came as a shock to us since Twitpic has been around since early 2008, and our trademark application has been in the USPTO since 2009.”

“Unfortunately we do not have the resources to fend off a large company like Twitter to maintain our mark which we believe whole heartedly is rightfully ours. Therefore, we have decided to shut down Twitpic.”

Everett said Twitter’s legal team reached out during the “published for opposition” phase of the trademark application. This is when the trademark in question has overcome any objections by an examining attorney in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and is published in the Official Gazette. At this point, those who have problems with the trademark has 30 days to file an “opposition to registration” or request an extension to oppose it.

This marked at least the third time Twitpic attempted to register its trademark, according to USPTO records. It filed its first application in 2009.

“We’re sad to see Twitpic is shutting down. We encourage developers to build on top of the Twitter service, as Twitpic has done for years, and we made it clear that they could operate using the Twitpic name. Of course, we also have to protect our brand, and that includes trademarks tied to the brand,” a Twitter spokesman said.

Twitter’s brand policy states third-party applications, websites and other products should not “apply for a trademark with a name including ‘Twitter’, ‘Tweet’, the Twitter bird, transliterations or similar variations thereof.”

Twitter has had a mixed history with its third-party developers. While it welcomed developers to build tools around its product in the early years, in 2012 it began imposing certain restrictions to access its API in an attempt to make the Twitter experience more uniform across various third party applications.

Twitpic was among the early cadre of photo-sharing services that let users upload and attach photos to tweets years before Twitter did so. Twitter finally began rolling out a comparable service in 2011.